In Defense Of Remakes And Reboots

I know, I know: Hollywood has run out of ideas. They keep making the same movies over and over again. You know you’re old when a movie from you adolescence gets a remake. Maybe the thought makes you grind your teeth and wake up in a cold sweat, feeling a desperate rage about The Craft getting a remake. Or maybe you’re still having nightmares about Chloe Grace-Moretz in Carrie — not because that movie was scary, but because it didn’t have to exist at all.

Well, buddy, I have bad news for you: Much like death and taxes, movie remakes are inevitable.

Remakes are Hollywood staples. Some of the greatest Hollywood epics ever made (The Ten Commandments, A Star Is Born, Cleopatra, and Ben-Hur) existed as some previous film. And, yes, there are a ton of terrible remakes, but there are also a handful of movies that truly reimagine the original film in a contemporary and impressive manner — sometimes even improving upon the original.

Remakes can be sure-fire hits (cheap cash grabs, at least), banking on familiar premises and titles, or they can be major disasters — for every King Kong there, is, well, a King Kong. Peter Jackson’s 2005 remake, featuring stunning special affects, was a box-office hit and a critical success, though its 1976 predecessor, directed by John Guillermin, does not hold the same critical regard (it did, of course, become a box-office smash). There’s also a lot of public outcry from fans of cult films who immediately dismiss the idea that their favorite film could possibly be reworked and reshot; sequels are one thing, but a remake is an abhorrent offense to commit against film lovers.

But here’s the thing about remakes: they’re not personal. A public outcry over a planned remake is pretty silly because, after all, the remakes are never for the original films’ fans — they’re for new audiences, younger audiences, who did not get the experience of seeing the original in a movie theater. It’s not very feasible to just rerelease popular movies (unless, of course, they’re rejiggered to be in 3D); after all, anyone can purchase or rent or stream a movie with relative ease instead of paying fifteen to twenty bucks to see it in a theater. Thus, the remake is still great for business. And if you don’t like it, the best you can do is not watch it. After all, a remake doesn’t tarnish the legacy or erase the existence of the original. (I mean, did there need to be another Poltergeist this year? Nope. I’m fine with watching the original once more instead.)

That’s where the reboot comes in. It’s sort of a sequel, sort of a remake — but it serves just want producers would pursue with a remake: to relauch a franchise. J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek was a risky move; he cast entirely new performers in roles that have become so iconic mostly because of who played the before. But his film worked by presenting the new characters — the younger versions of the original Star Trek crew — as existing in an alternate universe alongside their older selves. (Parallel universes and time travel are so philosophically befuddling that they also allow even more of a suspension of disbelief — at least for me. It was too exhausting to pedantically pick that movie apart for its flaws.) George Miller recast his hero for Mad Max: Fury Road, his first film in the Mad Max franchise in three decades, and made the character almost secondary; in turn, Miller made the physical figure of Mad Max almost moot, instead making him some sort of everyman hero who swoops in to assist those in peril and then heads off on his own once more. Jurassic World, the most like a sequel than the two other films mentioned here, still has elements of a reboot: it takes all of the vital elements of Jurassic Park and multiplies everything by ten. It’s bigger, scarier, more of a roller coaster ride, and even has the summer movie blockbuster idol du jour, Chris Pratt.

In the last thirteen years, there have been five movies about Spider-Man — two separate franchises with a third on the way. Necessary? Hello no. Do people love them? Of course. Would I rather have seen all of that money gone toward a brand-new movie with a completely original plot, new characters, and the sense that it was made not just as a methodical attempt to please an audience? Absolutely. But at the end of the day, most of us want our entertainment to be, well, entertaining. In these hazy summer months, when it’s too hot to think and we just need the comfort of a cool, dark room, sometimes we also desire the blissful pleasure of the familiar.

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Photos: Everett Collection